Topic: Teen Morals
Question: Do a teen's morals effect the age at which they become sexually active? How does this compare to the United State's teen pregnancy rate?
Background Info:
1) What is a moral?
a. principles or habits having to do with one’s judgment between right and wrong.
i. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moral

b. Teaching or exhibiting goodness or correctness of character and behavior: a moral lesson.
i. http://www.lisashea.com/lisabase/philosophy/art15380.html

c. Conforming to standards of what is right or just in behavior; virtuous: a moral life
i. http://www.lisashea.com/lisabase/philosophy/art15380.html

d. Morals are a set of beliefs or guild lines that people follow based on their culture or society. Morals are almost always different for individuals because morals are based on an individual's interpretation of what's good. Example, anti abortion people think abortion is immoral while pro abortion think it's immoral to force the woman to have a baby who will grow up in a negative environment. Most cultures have a different set morals base on religion or philosophy.
i. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070725222312AARYXRX

e. The difference between right and wrong
i. http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Alt/alt.politics.bush/2008-09/msg02309.html

2) Teen Pregnancy Statistics:
a. 75 out of every 1,000 women will become pregnant every year aged 15-19
b. Only 2/3 of teen pregnancies are unplanned
c. 11% of childbirths in the US are to teens
i. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_ATSRH.html

d. Teen pregnancy costs the US about $7 billion annually
e. The teenage birthrate has declined slowly, but surely, since 1991. Overall, this decline has totaled to about 30%
i. http://www.familyfirstaid.org/teen-pregnancy.html

Mr Skonecki, I have 4 books to read. My background info could take a little while...

Hypothesis: I think that teen morals will definitely affect when someone begins to engage in sexual activity. I don't think that the morals will have any effect on the teen pregnancy rate.

Materials:
Books on morals, and teens' active sex lives
20 Students to survey on their opinion of a moral
Lots of Time
Survey for your Subjects

Procedure:
  1. In order to begin your experiment, you're going to need to know a lot about your subjects. First off, your subjects need to be all of the same religious background (Atheist, preferably, considering then their religious beliefs wouldn't affect their decision to have sex.) Your subjects also need to be all of the same age group. Then, you would put together a survey, and administer it to your subjects. This survey would have to ask, in a few different ways, what a moral is, and if they have an active sex life.
  2. Once you have collected your teens' idea of a moral, you can begin to put together your data in a chart.Your chart should look similar to this:
Teens Morals and Active Sex Lives
  • ||> Moral # 1 ||> ||
  • ||> Moral # 2 ||> ||
  • ||> Moral # 3 ||> ||
  • ||> Moral # 4 ||> ||
  • ||> Moral # 5 ||> ||
  • ||> # of Virgin Subjects ||> ||
  • ||> # of Non Virgin Subjects ||> ||